Information can be disseminated in a variety of ways. For example, newspapers may be used, signs may be erected along road-sides, mail or e-mail may be sent, or internet streaming may be employed to transmit information to one or more recipients, which may comprise processes or persons. In industrial processes, control information to modify the functioning of an industrial process, such as for example a plastic pellet manufacturing process, may be delivered using electrical leads.
A set of recipients of information may be pre-defined, as in the case of sending email, or the set of recipients may be open, as in the case of radio broadcasts. Electronic delivery of information can be directed to specific recipients or more generically. For example, cellular telephone calls can be switched to a specific mobile telephone number, whereas informational bulletins in computer operating systems may be directed to any user of the operating system.
Electronic communication offers the possibility to deliver information to a large group of persons or processes, wherein it may be preferable to not deliver exactly the same information to all recipients at the same time. For example, when manufacturing plastic pellets, it may be advantageous to, over a time period, deliver the same instructions to a plurality of process units, but in case all units receive identical instructions at exactly the same time, unwanted spikes in electricity usage may be caused.
Similarly, when communicating to people, in case all people receive the same message at the same time, their reactions may overload systems. Also simply delivering a large email simultaneously to thousands of people may overload an email distribution system. Moreover, communication opportunities to all people, or all processes, may not be present at the same time, rather processes may poll a control aggregator, or people may view an information source, at random or pseudo-random times.